THE award-winning play for people of all ages, My Uncle Arly by Hoipolloi, is at The Corn Exchange, Newbury, for a pre-Christmas season treat, on November 26 and 27.

It's Victorian England and an English eccentric leaves Bristol to make his way to Italy.

But this is no ordinary journey, with travelling companions like the Dong with the Luminous Nose.

This is the journey of limerick writer Edward Lear.

With clowning, slapstick, singing and music, My Uncle Arly is inspired by the illustrations, life and poems of the great British nonsense poet, weaving Lear's poetry together with original songs and comic reworkings of some of his best-loved characters.

Don't be afraid to come to the show if you have no children to bring, Hoipolloi stress that "adults love the show", and it's a "funny and exciting piece of theatre".

It has a message of hope too. Lear's nonsense poems were a way of transcending his problems with epilepsy and melancholia into a landscape of sheer imaginative delight.

Tickets, priced £6.50, are available from the box office on 01635 522733 or via the website www.cornexchangenew.com